Italian food planned for Houston Street

There are plans to turn former Le Midi, 301 E. Houston St., into Toscana, a fine dining Italian restaurant.

There’s never anything good about a restaurant in downtown S.A. closing, especially when the location is Houston Street. At least the street, it seems of late, heals fast.

Having opened in September 2009 in the Vogue Building’s street-level space, Provincial French restaurant Le Midi, 301 E. Houston St., had a great run, but it closed last week.

Now, a restaurant partnership, whose owners live in Texas and Mexico, is opening an upscale Italian restaurant there called Toscana Ristorante. The plan is for it to open in about a month, maybe longer.

“Right now, we’re looking at 30 to 45 days,” said Toscana general manager Richard Sustiata. “I kind of have the date of June 1 in my head. We are finishing up demolition of the dining room. Luckily, we are not having to do any renovation in the kitchen.”

There are plans to completely renovate the dining room. For example, a wood brick oven is planned for the area where the bar was. And then there’s an indoor cascading waterfall, and patio seating along Navarro, as well as Houston streets.

The menu will be “traditional Italian comfort food, done in a gourmet style,” Sustiata said. The bar menu will include unique cocktails, a wine list “on par with some of the fine dining restaurants” on Houston Street and craft beer.

They want to reduce the bar’s size and relocate it closer to Navarro Street, where it will have its own entrance there. Sustiata said Toscana will cater to service industry folk by offering specials, and by staying open later.